One of the alumni of our MD-PhD program, Oscar Colegio, died this summer, right before his 48th birthday. It is hard to summarize who Oscar was because he was many things to many of our medical and scientific community, including to numerous trainees. Nor is it possible to summarize what he accomplished over his academic career. I will briefly point out that he made important advances in the tight junction field as a graduate student with James Anderson and in the tumor microenvironment field as a postdoc with Ruslan Medzhitov. Throughout these intense research endeavors, his devotion to his patients never wavered and he quickly and quite early became a leader in the Dermatology community, in particular in the area of skin cancer. Ultimately, he became Chair of Dermatology at Roswell Park in Buffalo, N.Y.
Many people have written and talked about these amazing accomplishments. I think it is important to highlight how Oscar did what he did and how he became this amazing physician-scientist, a true “triple threat”. As Richard Edelson mentioned in his beautiful tribute for the medical school, Oscar was born and raised in McAllen, TX, on the border between the U.S. and Mexico. He pointed out that his family was there before it was the U.S. McAllen is a unique place; before the rhetoric about walls and borders between Mexico and the U.S., McAllen was a place that harmonized the two countries and cultures. And that was Oscar. However, the school system was not a typical place to foster a young physician-scientist. In fact, of his graduating class of more than 2000 students, only a handful went to college. Oscar’s parents, Rosie and Leonardo, insisted that all three of their children would attend college. It was not questioned. So, for the yearly tuition of about $3000, Oscar went to University of Texas in Austin. That was a formative time and place and enabled the future physician-scientist to find his way to Yale. Along the way, to add to the list of degrees he would ultimately accumulate, he earned a Doctor of Pharmacy.
I met Oscar August of 1996 when the Yale School of Medicine Class of 2000 arrived at Harkness Hall and went camping as part of orientation. It was clear that both Oscar and I were a bit “unconventional” and so we quickly became friends. I want to point out something out that highlights Oscar’s dedication and drive to become a physician-scientist. He was not immediately accepted into the MD/PhD program. During his first year of medical school, he worked on establishing research experiences at Yale and writing his internal application for the program. The program did finally accept him, and the rest is history. I am thankful that the Yale Dermatology Department will honor Oscar with an annual award for Dermatologists who exemplify his amazing career.
I met Oscar August of 1996 when the Yale School of Medicine Class of 2000 arrived at Harkness Hall and went camping as part of orientation. It was clear that both Oscar and I were a bit “unconventional” and so we quickly became friends.
Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD ’05, PhD ‘03, is currently an Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine, Immunobiology, Immunology here at Yale School of Medicine.